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Here and There

“The joy of God goes through the poverty of the manger and the agony of the cross; that is why it is invincible, irrefutable. It does not deny the anguish, when it is there, but finds God in the midst of it, in fact precisely there.” – Bonhoeffer, Personal Letters

He came and he comes. He is here. This is good news of great joy. It’s the story of Christmas. It’s all our hope.

Let me remind you:

If he is here, then he is also there.

There in the places you need him most. There in the way things really are. There in your failures and fatigue. There in the darkness and loss and grief and sadness. There where you’ve run out of ideas or energy, where you are finding you don’t have what it takes. There in the worry and the stress and the guilt. There where the thing is not going very well. There when you are stressing about money, about future, about direction. There when you realize you aren’t really stressing about money or future or direction per se, but about your worth as a person. There in those things you wish no one to know. There in the crazy-anxious-sleepless-night-mind-racing thoughts. There where you keep running up against your limitations. There where you are swearing that this time will be different. There in feelings of emptiness and purposelessness. There where you realize your tendency to be awkward. There in your insecurity, pain, doubt, loneliness. There where you find yourself afraid and unsure and weak and needy.